The Next Mrs. Blackthorne (Bitter Creek Book 6) (13 page)

“Whoa,” Jack said, putting out a hand. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“I’ve already told you,” she said, sitting on the edge of the bed to yank off her boots and socks. She lifted her hips and pulled off her jeans. Then she stood before him, wearing only her white bra and a pair of colorful bikini bottoms.

His eyes surveyed her from head to toe. He lifted an eyebrow, but he looked distinctly…unimpressed.

Kate was seething inside at his dismissal of her charms, but she’d be damned if she let him know it. She retrieved a pillow from the top of the bed and a blanket from the foot and made herself a pallet on the rug.

“I said I’d take the floor,” Jack said in a biting voice.

“And I said that isn’t necessary,”

“You’re being ridiculous.”

“Well, we children have a tendency to do that,” she replied saracastically. She turned to glare at him, and found herself arrested by what she saw.

His butter-soft jeans didn’t leave much to the imagination. She’d been wrong. He
had
noticed how grown up she was. Her eyes shot to his face, but he looked annoyed, rather than aroused. He was clearly determined to ignore her.

Well. She’d see about that. Kate didn’t know what imp provoked her to test his self-control. She shoved her hands up into her hair as though it was heavy on her shoulders and let it fall across her breasts, then reached behind her to unsnap her bra and let it fall to the floor.

Kate felt herself flushing when she realized her hair had not covered her breasts as she’d hoped. Her peaked nipples protruded. She resisted the urge to rearrange her hair to cover them. Instead, she lifted her eyes to meet Jack’s and moved toward him slowly, one bare foot in front of the other, wondering what would happen when she reached him.

“Stop right there,” he said in a guttural voice.

She stood a mere foot from him, but she could feel the tension arcing between them and smell some masculine scent that made her body prickle. The hairs on her arms stood up, and her belly curled with unmistakable desire. Jack’s eyes were heavy-lidded, dark and lambent. He focused on her mouth before moving to her breasts, and then her belly, where the last of her dark tresses curled against the hem of her bikini panties.

She felt an irresistable urge to move into Jack’s embrace, but her feet were rooted to the floor. The look on his face was terrifying. And exhilarating. She’d wanted to prove to him that he wasn’t as cool and calm and collected as he thought he was. And she’d succeeded. She’d peeled away the thin veneer of civilization that covered his base animal lust, but she wasn’t sure what to do with the savage beast she’d set free.

She heard Jack swallow audibly. She met his gaze and felt frightened by his dark, inscrutable eyes.

She was surprised at how quickly he moved, how tightly he held her arms in his powerful grasp, and how fast his mouth captured her own. His tongue thrust deep and the sound he made in his throat caused her insides to twist with an agony of pleasure. She moaned as she reached out for him. But he had too tight a hold on her and kept their bodies separated.

A moment later, he wrenched their mouths apart. He stared down into her eyes, his own glittering with a need so fierce it stopped her breath. “Get in that bed,” he said in a harsh, guttural voice. “Before I put you there.”

It only took a moment for her to divine what he meant. She could get into bed—and sleep there by herself. Or she could wait for him to put her there—and join her.

Kate usually responded to threats with defiance. But she could see his body quivering and knew that whatever leash he had on himself was within a hairs-breadth of breaking. She opened her mouth to say she wanted him as much as he wanted her, and suddenly remembered why they were in this room together.

It was all pretend. For the purpose of getting her parents together. He was a playboy, a gambler, and, for all the world knew, a cheat. He might want her body, but that was all. He didn’t even know who she was, not really.

Kate waited for him to release her. When he didn’t, she realized that he’d gone beyond that point. If she wanted to be free, she would have to make the first move. She met his gaze, raised her chin, and said, “Let me go.”

The instant she spoke, his hands released her. She almost stumbled backward. He reached out to catch her, but she stepped beyond his reach, certain that if he touched her again, she might surrender to his desire. And regret it the rest of her life.

“I’ll take the bed,” she said in a shaky voice. She barely managed to swallow the sob that threatened to prove what a child she really was.

He reached for his shirt and threw it to her. “Put that on.”

Her hands were shaking too much to find the armholes, but he didn’t offer to help. He stared at her, his dark eyes hard and dangerous, until she finally managed to get her arms into the shirt and pulled it over her shoulders.

She could hear his harsh breathing, feel a bestial need emanating from him, almost smell the harsh scent of sexual desire.

She tried to snap the shirt, but her hands were trembling too badly for her to get the two pieces of metal to meet. Abruptly, his large hands appeared under her nose. As she stared up at him, he snapped the top two snaps, then took a step back and said in a rough, scornful voice, “Get in bed.”

She stared at him a moment, wishing she could get the tongue off the roof of her mouth to speak. But it was stuck there. She climbed into bed, shivering as the cold sheets hit her bare legs, then watched, wide-eyed, as he turned away without another word and settled onto the pallet she’d arranged on the rug. As a final insult, he turned his back on her and pulled the blanket up over his shoulder, shutting her completely out.

Kate glared at him, then realized he couldn’t see her disdain. Just in case he looked back in her direction, she turned her back on him and pulled the covers up over her shoulders. She realized the light was still on, but she was afraid to move to turn it off. Besides, she felt safer with the light on.

A moment later, however, she heard the light behind her click off. She shivered again in the dark, and pulled the covers tighter around her. She’d had a narrow escape.

Kate tried to sleep, but sleep evaded her. She listened for Jack’s breathing and realized he wasn’t asleep either.

“I’m sorry I got us into this,” she said.

“You should be,” he shot back.

She sat up, perturbed at his ungracious response. “I’m not sorry I put us in the same room,” she clarified. “I’m only sorry I started playing games once I got here.”

“You should be,” he repeated just as brusquely.

“That’s not fair, Jack,” she said. “You’re as much to blame—”

That was as far as she got before the light clicked on and she found herself staring up at a very intimidating male figure. She clutched the sheet to her chest, aware that she was half naked.

“Don’t you know better than to do that sort of striptease in front of man?” he demanded.

“I never thought—”

“That’s right,” he said, “You don’t think! You’re an impulsive—”

She was on her knees facing him in an instant, holding the covers with one hand, poking his chest with a finger of the other. “This was supposed to be
pretend!
You’re the one who made it into something else.”

“I suggest we forget what happened here tonight and get back to the original plan.”

“Fine,” Kate spat.

“Fine,” he retorted.

They glared at each other for another moment, before Jack reached over and turned out the light.

Kate was left staring into the darkness. She could hear him settling back onto the floor and, grumbling to herself, curled onto her side, her back to him, wondering how she could ever go on with the game they were playing. Wanting Jack suddenly felt very real.

“I’m only doing this because I love my parents and want to see them together,” she whispered into the darkness.

Jack didn’t reply.

Jack was careful not to make a sound as he snuck out of the house to make a call on his cell phone.

“You’ll never guess who’s sleeping under my roof,” he said when the call was answered. “That’s right. The judge himself. And the girl and her mother.”

He listened, then said, “Now is not the time. I think it’s better if we wait.”

The wind soughed through trees, making them rustle as he listened. Finally, he said, “I’d better get back inside. I can’t count on any of them staying put all night, and I don’t want to have to do any explaining. I’ll talk to you soon.”

Donnie watched as his brother Bobby John closed his cell phone. Donnie hated his brother. And his mother, whose eyes were squinted into narrow slits as she leaned her head back to avoid the smoke curling up from the filtered cigarette between her bony fingers. The two of them were deep in conversation. They expected him to think the way they did. But he never would. Not if he lived to be a hundred and three.

The two of them were sitting across the smoky bar from Donnie, in a corner booth with an old-time lantern that shed scant light. Donnie picked up his beer—nobody here had questioned his age—and took a deep, satisfying drink, wiping the foam from his lips with his sleeve.

“So, Donnie,” the reporter from
The Weekly Herald
, the newspaper serving the suburb closest to their farm, said, “I haven’t seen a Letter to the Editor from you in a long time.”

Donnie glowered at the middle-aged man, with his close-cropped hair and clean-shaven face, sitting across from him and said, “I’ve been a little busy.”

The sound of wailing violins and a mournful country voice on the jukebox made it hard to hear each other, even across the table.

“When can I expect to print something?” the man persisted.

Donnie scowled. “Give me a chance to get my thoughts together. I’ll get in touch with you when I have something.”

The gray-headed man picked up his Stetson, which had been sitting crown down on the table between them and settled it very carefully and evenly on his head. “Not much time left before the trial is over,” he said.

Donnie shot a murderous glance toward his brother and mother, whose heads were close together. He watched as his brother laughed. “You’d never know it to look at the two of them,” he said bitterly.

“You know I’m there whenever you need me,” the reporter said.

“You always have been,” Donnie said. “And I appreciate it. I’ll be in touch with you. Very soon.”

Libby sat with her arms circling her knees, wrapped up snug in a quilt, on a wooden swing on the front porch of the foreman’s house, wishing she’d stayed in bed. At least there she’d had a chance at sleep. For the past hour, she’d been listening to the soothing night sounds—the cicada, the occasional lowing of cattle, the rustle of the live oak in the wind—but she felt no less disturbed.

It seemed lately that whenever she and Clay were alone together, one or the other of them said something hurtful. The sad thing was, it hadn’t always been that way. During the years Kate was growing up, they’d somehow managed to be civil. Ever since Kate had been kidnapped last year, and Clay had kissed Libby for the first time in twenty-odd years, the gloves had come off.

Tonight, she’d been the one who’d said something scathing. She tried to remember exactly what Clay had said to provoke her, something like, “Kate’s acting as crazy as you did at her age.” It hadn’t taken much to push her over the edge.

She hadn’t been able to contain the bitterness she felt that, despite everything she and Clay had been through over the past twenty years raising a child together, and the never-extinguished sexual sizzle that last year’s kiss had revealed, Clay was still so
goddamned
unforgiving of that long-ago betrayal.

“I see you couldn’t sleep either.”

Clay’s quiet voice startled her. Libby would have jumped to her feet, but she got tangled in the patchwork quilt. Before she could get free, Clay was already sitting beside her on the swing. She felt at a disadvantage, because he was dressed in a UT sweatshirt and jeans, while under the blanket, she was wearing only a set of skimpy baby doll pajamas Kate had lent her.

“What time is it?” she asked.

“Four. Five. Too close to morning for me to lie in bed anymore. How long have you been sitting out here?”

“Not long,” she lied.

As he set the swing moving with one booted foot, she pulled her bare toes farther beneath the blanket.

She waited for Clay to speak, but he seemed content merely to sit with her and watch the gold and pink beginnings of the dawn. Libby was very aware of him, of his body heat, his musky smell, the way his too-long-for-a-judge black hair settled over his brow and nape. His silent closeness, and her heightened awareness of him, reminded her of the last wonderful night they’d made love, more than twenty years ago.

And the devastating morning that had followed.

They’d fallen asleep on a blanket in the grass beneath a willow on Clay’s Wyoming ranch. Libby couldn’t remember who’d woken first, but she remembered feeling anxious and guilty when she’d looked into Clay’s gray eyes, which looked back at her with tenderness in the early morning light.

In that precious predawn moment, she’d been very aware that she loved Clay Blackthorne. And that she’d lied to him.

Libby was terrified of what Clay would do when he found out the truth. That she was only sixteen, not twenty-one, as she’d told him. That she was the daughter of his father’s mortal enemy, King Grayhawk. And that she was pregnant.

She’d known she owed him an explanation. But after the exquisite night of lovemaking just past—which might very well be their last, considering what she was about to tell him—it was hard to confess what she’d done.

“Clay…” She heard a gurgle as she swallowed over the painful lump in her throat.

His forefinger smoothed the furrow between her eyes. He smiled at her as he said in a gruff, early-morning voice, “What’s this frown all about?”

“I have something I need to tell you.”

He grinned and said, “That sounds serious.”

“It is.”

He sobered, leaned forward and kissed her lips gently, and said, “What can I do to help, sweetheart?”

Her throat ached from the deceit she’d practiced on the man she loved. Her heart was pounding with fear of what Clay would do when he knew the truth.

“I’m pregnant,” she blurted.

She saw surprise flare in his eyes, before they narrowed. He sat up and pulled her up with him. She grabbed at the wool blanket to cover her nakedness, suddenly ashamed, like Eve in the Garden of Eden.

“You said you were on the pill.”

She glanced at him from beneath lowered lashes, needing to hide her guilt, and said, “I’m not.”

He grabbed her arms and said, “Look at me, Libby.”

She forced herself to meet his gaze and saw the sudden wariness in his eyes.

“What’s going on?” he asked between tight jaws.

“I thought you’d be able to tell,” she said quietly.

“Tell what?” he said irritably. When she didn’t answer, he shook her and said, “Talk to me!”

“That I was a virgin when you and I—”

“Are you telling me—” He let her go abruptly. “That’s not possible. There was no barrier to—”

“There was!” She’d felt something the first time he’d broached her, but whatever barrier had been there had apparently been broken without Clay being aware of it.

His hands fisted on his thighs as he stared suspiciously into her eyes. “Why didn’t you say something?”

How could she explain that she’d never intended to have sex with him? That she’d only planned to tease him and leave him high and dry? But that she’d loved what she felt when he touched her, adored his kisses even more, and she hadn’t wanted him to stop.

It had just…happened.

She hadn’t wanted to tell him the truth about herself, because she hadn’t wanted this amazing interlude to end. As she’d known it would, as soon as he found out who she really was.

“I’m sorry,” she said in a low, trembling voice, focusing her gaze on her knees.

“Sorry isn’t going to cut it!” he shot back. “What are you going to do?”

She stared up at him, confused. “What do you mean?”

“About the baby.”

She continued to stare.

“Are you keeping it?” he snapped.

“Of course I’m keeping it!” she retorted, appalled that he could think anything else.

He let out a breath and said in a voice so low she wasn’t sure she’d heard him right, “Thank God.”

“I didn’t mean for this to happen,” she said miserably.
For any of it to happen.

He reached out and twined his hand with hers and looked into her eyes and said, “I would rather have waited for kids, but I can’t say I’m sorry.”

Her eyes opened wide. “You’re not?”

He grinned and said, “I didn’t plan to fall in love with you. But I have. A politician needs a wife. I suppose we’ll just have to marry a little sooner than I’d planned and with a little less pomp and circumstance.”

“You want to marry me?” she said, her jaw gaping.

In the moment he opened his mouth to speak, they heard hoofbeats.

Libby leapt to her feet at the sight of the four riders loping in their direction and dropped the blanket to scramble into her clothes. Clay was laughing at her, telling her not to worry, that he’d make sure that whoever it was didn’t bother them. He dragged on his briefs and jeans and stepped out bare-chested from beneath the willow that had protected them.

And found himself confronting King Grayhawk, backed up by three of his cowhands.

“You’re trespassing on my land,” Clay said. “You can turn your horses around and—”

“Where’s my daughter?” King demanded.

“How the hell should I know where your daughter is?” Clay retorted.

“I’m here, Daddy,” Libby said, stepping from beneath the concealing branches of the tree.

If she lived to be ninety-nine, Libby would never forget the look of utter horror on Clay’s face as he turned to face her. “You said your name was Henderson.”

She shook her head.

“King Grayhawk is your father?”

Libby flushed with shame and once again lowered her gaze, unable to endure the shock and confusion in Clay’s eyes. “Yes,” she whispered past her constricted throat.

“My sixteen-year-old daughter,” King said.

She heard Clay suck in a breath of air and waited for him to release it. She reached out to him, wanting to explain, but he jerked away as though she were something unclean and expelled his breath in a rush. When she reached out her hands to him in supplication, he shook his head, his gray eyes remote, as though a wall had gone up to keep her from seeing inside.

“Saddle my daughter’s horse,” King ordered one of his cowhands.

“I can do it, Daddy,” Libby said.

“Get your clothes on,” he said curtly.

Libby realized she was still barefoot, and that her blouse wasn’t tucked into her jeans and her belt was still unbuckled. She shoved her long blond hair behind her ear and felt a piece of grass, which she quickly plucked out and threw away. She turned her back on her father and his men and tucked in her blouse and rezipped her jeans and buckled her belt, then stood one-legged while she pulled on her socks and boots.

“Let’s go,” King ordered.

She didn’t look at Clay. She didn’t speak to him. But before she’d taken two steps toward her horse he snagged her arm and said, “Wait.”

“Let go of my daughter,” King ordered.

Clay looked up at him and said through tight jaws, “She and I have things we need to discuss.”

“No, you don’t,” King said implacably.

Clay turned to her and said, “I’ll come see you at your father’s house, and we’ll talk.”

She glanced up at him long enough to see the warmth was gone from his eyes, then hurried to mount her horse.

Behind her she heard her father say, “Don’t bother coming to Kingdom Come. You won’t be welcome.”

“I’m coming. Do what you have to do,” Clay said.

“You set one foot on my property, and I’ll shoot you for the lowdown coyote you are!” her father said.

“Send your men away,” Clay said eyeing the three cowboys. “So we can talk.”

Libby was mounted by then and rode toward her father, stopping at Clay’s side. “I’ll talk to him, Clay. I’ll tell him…everything.”

“I’ll come tonight,” Clay said. But he didn’t touch her.

Libby felt tears sting her eyes and nose.

“Get home, girl,” her father said.

Libby had kicked her mount into a lope. She hadn’t despaired, because she thought perhaps Clay was the one man who could talk her father around. Clay loved her.

Or had before he found out the truth.

She was carrying his child. A child he’d wanted.

Or had before he found out the truth.

All would be well, she thought. She would explain everything and he would forgive her and they would be together forever.

She couldn’t have been more wrong.

Libby glanced sideways to the man sitting next to her twenty years later, moving the swing with his booted foot, wondering if Clay ever thought about that long-ago dawn. And the darkness that had followed it.

“I’m worried about Kate,” he said.

Libby felt a stab of hopelessness that his first words were not about the two of them, but about their daughter. It was a blessing that he cared so much about Kate, under the circumstances. But she wanted…the impossible.

Clay Blackthorne was his mother’s son, all right. Eve Blackthorne had never forgiven Clay’s father for loving another woman. And Clay was never going to forgive her for deceiving him. She was tired of longing for a doomed love. Maybe it was time to give up. Maybe, ha! It was long past time to give up.

But they had a daughter together. And she was in trouble. Her own concerns would have to wait.

“I’m worried about Kate, too,” Libby said. “Jack’s a great deal older than her. And his reputation is…not the best.”

“I wish there were some way to convince her what a big mistake she’s making,” Clay said.

“How do you know it is a mistake?” Libby asked. “She seems very much in love with him.”

“He doesn’t seem equally smitten.”

“That would be a problem if it were ture,” Libby said. She looked at Clay and asked, “What makes you think Jack doesn’t love Kate?”

Clay’s brow furrowed. “I can’t put my finger on anything specific.”

“The physical attraction is certainly evident,” Libby said.

Clay smiled ruefully. “It’s hard to tell her not to have sex before marriage when it’s so obvious her parents did it.”

“And did it well.” Libby bit her lip. She had to forget dreams of what might have been. Or wishes for what might be. She had to stay focused on Kate.

She shivered as a tendril of morning mist settled onto her bare shoulder, where the quilt had fallen away.

“You’re cold.” Clay pulled the quilt higher on her shoulder and settled his arm around her, drawing her close.

It would have been awkward to try to hold her head upright, so Libby gave in to the urge to lean against Clay’s shoulder, to pretend that they were the
happily married
parents of an exuberant, willful child—who might be headed for heartbreak.

She listened to the steady thump of Clay’s heart for a moment before she asked, “How are we going to convince Kate to slow down?”